active transportation

"Where the bike lane ends" by Tino

Toronto's Official Plan is a powerful policy instrument that can help improve a city wide bikeway network over time and deal with the gaps in the network. We still have until Oct. 17 to provide feedback and suggestions for the plan in the City's short survey. This is a good place for us to tell policy makers what is our priority for the city.

If you are wondering how you can provide useful suggestions for the Official Plan, one place to start would be to identify gaps in the Bikeway Network and think of how those gaps could be closed (hey, you could even suggest they put back in the recently-voted-to-be-removed Jarvis, Pharmacy and Birchmount!).

Some examples of suggestions for the Official Plan:

The City is in the first stage of its new Official Plan Reviews and currently in the midst of the September Open Houses. Next week the Open Houses are at York Civic Centre on Sept 26 and at North York Civic Centre on Sept 27.

Open Houses run 3:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and include facilitated discussions. If you cycle regularly you may be interested in attending one of the open houses and provide some input on how the Official Plan can benefit active transportation and, in particular, cycling.

The Open House material (discussion guide, presentation and display boards) will be posted under the "Events and Meetings" tab on the Review website.

People can also take the fast feedback survey which runs to October 17. It can be good alternative if you can't make one of the open houses. I completed the survey and found that they are already aware that cycling is important to take account of in planning our cities and would like to know more of how we think the official plan can reflect that.

Motorists who harass cyclists, by honking, yelling at us, or buzzing us have no excuse. They don't even have the lousy excuse that we hold them up, because we don't. Motorists who harass cyclists do it because they can. They have a steel cage to protect them from the consequences of their behaviour, and an engine to run away. Other people suffer the consequences; often the most vulnerable of road users. To see an example of this, take a look at the accompanying video.

There is some danger of assigning "mandates" to elections. Toronto just elected as mayor the worst choice possible for supporting walking or cycling. As Eric at Curbside puts it: "Today the city of Toronto voted in its 64th mayor, a porkchop of a man who, by all looks, rarely refuses gravy." So does this mean the war on the car has been won by the drivers?

Lloyd of Treehugger thinks so, that there's a big backlash coming:

The people of Toronto have spoken, loudly. Bike activists and environmentalists across the country should listen, there is an anger out there. Much of this was about taxes and purported waste, but a lot of it was about the war on the car, which we just lost.

Eric disagrees:

The fact is, people will handcuff themselves to streetcar tracks before any rail is removed and while the number of cyclists is only going to explode. We’re located in the Annex, home of Toronto’s powerful left-wing elite, and truth is, the Annex is spoiling for a fight. Not since the Spadina Expressway protests has there been a galvanizing reason to join minds. And, this time its going to be all about the bicycle.

A few weeks ago a positive cycling article came out in - of all places - Wheels, the Toronto Star's car fetish section. The author, Mark Richardson, rode country roads alongside Eleanor McMahon, founder of the Share the Road coalition. The article is interesting for not only its focus on McMahon's strong push for better cycling infrastructure and her experience working with politicians and policy-makers, but also for the fact that Richardson has had an increasing personal interest in cycling. As he notes in a May article, Cyclists aren't leaving, and add Editor to ranks:

Yes, the editor of Canada’s largest automotive publication also rides a bicycle. I wrote here last summer of how my cruel and unusual wife, a keen cyclist, has been prying me from the broad saddle of my Harley-Davidson and onto the spindly seat of her old Fisher hybrid. My kids bought me Lycra cycling gear for my birthday, and on a pleasant afternoon, the two of us will head out on the country roads near our home in Milton.

And then in July, Richardson's wife convinced him to go on the 730 km Great Waterfront Trail Adventure from Niagara-on-the-Lake to the Quebec border.

The Orange team won the ThinkBike with their excellent ideas for improving Sherbourne street and its bike lanes from the lake up to Bloor.

ThinkBike was a two day workshop where visiting Dutch planners participated in the playful planning contest of local planners and citizens (the group will travel on to Chicago next). The interesting results were presented at El Mocambo last Tuesday to a much larger crowd than you'd expect for a planning exercise. It certainly helped that the cycling crowd has diversified; more people are interested in how the streets can be made safer; and the City staff are doing a much better job of reaching out to the general public. We all learned a few things (and not just some "Englutch").

The Blue Team presented an equally impressive proposal on improving the bikeway network in the downtown core and some excellent ideas of what should be included in an updated Bike Plan (which needs some reworking given the political threats to cycling in Toronto).

More thought went into Sherbourne street than Rob Ford's team put into running the entire city

Proposed design for a Sherbourne intersection

A private member's bill has been introduced in the provincial legislature calling for Ontario's rural road shoulders to be paved, providing more breathing room for cyclists. If you are like me and have done a fair bit of riding on country roads you'll be quite pleased if this comes to pass, particularly for the busier country roads with painted lines. Paved shoulders can change a nightmare road to something quite bearable. It's unclear how this would mesh with the Highway Traffic Act's requirement that cyclists - and their "vehicles" - remain in the official lanes and not on the shoulder. Will the Act need to be updated to allow cyclists to ride on the shoulder without fear of being ticketed?

Surprisingly the bill was put forth by Norm Miller, Conservative MPP for Parry Sound-Muskoka, and has the support of the Share The Road cycling foundation, an organization started by Eleanor McMahon after her husband, OPP Sgt. Greg Stobbart, was killed while cycling in Milton, Ont., in June 2006.

Meanwhile the Liberal Transportation Minister Kathleen Wynne expressed interest: "We're very interested in this and have already begun to review the policy," she said. "I think he's right about tourism. But there are going to be places in the province where it makes more sense than others. So we're developing criteria."